Olympic fever also felt in the finest kitchens
“The thrill of victory. And the agony of defeat.”
I will never forget the bewitching introduction to ABC’s Wide World of Sports. The billowing surge of a full symphony, the announcer’s deep and clear enunciation delivering the feeling right into my guts, and the visual montage of athletes flourishing in either agony or defeat. The harrowing final clip of the montage with a ski jumper careening off the jump to certain great physical and mental pain, forever etched onto my DNA.
I was hooked. I wanted to compete.
As the world tunes into the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, the wonder of competition is once again visited upon each one of us. In many cases, tenths and hundredths of seconds will spread the field between gold and ‘no place.’ Underdogs will triumph and past champions will be vanquished. Unbelievable will be the norm.
The only thing that can not be debated is the pure commitment and sheer determination every athlete, coach and support team bring with them to these games. I think it is the manyfold years of total devotion to an ideal, to a sport or métier that fuses our fascination with games at this level. We humans love persistence and resolve.
Believe it or not, this total commitment to competition is available in the culinary world, too. And while I am not a total believer in competing with food, or any art for that matter as they serve something else entirely to us, I am nonetheless entirely enamoured with the dedication and resolve it takes to get there. The passion and technique required is unbridled. Culinary Olympians are as praiseworthy for their tenacity as their peers in sport.
The Culinary Olympics — or IKA (Internationalle Kochkunst Ausstellung) — is a quadrennial event, just like its cousin in the sporting world.
Conceived in the late 1890s to engage and promote the cuisine of Germany, the first Culinary Olympics happened in 1900 in Frankfurt and comprised four competing nations. The event happened every four years there, with the exception of the years during the Second World War when Adolf Hitler invoked a total ban on Germany participating in any international societies, until 1996 when it moved to Berlin and now Erfurt. The total countries represented at the IKA is now more than 50. It is a good event from this nation’s perspective, the Canadian team won gold in 2016.
And while the IKA holds the namesake for ‘Culinary Olympics,’ it is the Bocuse D’Or that stands as the most lauded culinary competition in the world; winning the gold statuette of Chef Bocuse is the envy of every serious participant in international culinary competition. It is named for the coltish and larger than life French chef, Paul Bocuse — the ‘Father of New Cuisine’ who left us at age 91 in January.
Like the ethos he breathed in his private and professional life, the Bocuse D’Or is very animated and a full-on spectacle. The brainchild borne of chef Bocuse in 1983 when he was asked to preside over a French national competition and found it staid and flat, very much in need of a ‘live competition’ angle to test the participants and engage the spectators. Four years later the first Bocuse D’Or took place in Lyon, France, and became the precursor as well as the zenith of ‘live’ culinary events the world over. It issued into our culture several ‘copies’ such as Iron Chef, Hell’s Kitchen and Chopped, though the comparison is in similarity of competition and certainly not level of participant.
Whether you are sporty, culinary, neither or both, there is an international event for you. Get your cheer on. Go Canada!